Kodel Electric Kemco Homovie 16mm movie camera

During the 1920’s amateur movie making was quite expensive, only the wealthy could afford the equipment and film needed to make home movies. Then in 1923 Kodak Introduced 16mm Safety Film as a less expensive alternative to 35mm film for amateurs. The Cine Kodak was a success, but it was still quite expensive to make home movies.

“Revolutionary Type Amateur Camera Soon to Appear”

— American Cinematographer- November, 1929

In 1926 Clarence Ogden, a pioneer in early radio equipment and the owner of Kodel Electric and Manufacturing Company in Cincinnati, Ohio had an idea that would reduce the cost of making movies dramatically. It was Ogden’s vision to bring affordability to amateur movie making and revolutionize the amateur market.

By 1928, he had a workable product, and he began promoting the system in trade magazines.

American Cinematographer November, 1929 — American Cinematographer- November, 1929

In a trade article in the American Cinematographer magazine, Ogden boasted that they spent more than $200,000 and employeed over 10 engineers to develop the system. One of those engineers, Harold Ridge began testing the cameras with standard 16mm film.

Test Films shot by C.E. Ogden and Harold Ridge

After shooting the test films, they were then mailed directly to Agfa and Kodak Labs for processing. Kodak (and Agfa) then sent the films back, addressed directly to the owner and lead engineer at Kodel Electric.

Ogden believed his new invention would be a truly “Revolutionary New Movie Principle” that would “Astonish the Movie World!”

“Revolutionary new movie principle cuts cost of taking motion pictures 75%. Astonishes movie world! ”

— Kemco Homovies Advertisment- October, 1930

16mm Film

A standard roll of 16mm film in 1923 was only 100’ long, this would run for about 4 minutes at 16fps. Once you bought the film, paid to get it processed and then bought an accompanying projector to view the film, the entire process could get quite costly.

MOVIE MAKERS, August, 1930
KEMCO HOMOVIES may be projected to the usual home size and appear on the screen with super detail and unusual brilliancy. Performance is in every way equal to that of other outfits using four times as much film and is in no way affected by HOMOVIE economy.Uses Only One-Fourth the Usual Length of Film.

Ogden, however, found a way to save 75% of the footage on a standard roll of 16mm film. With the Homovie camera, that same 100’ roll of film now gives you 16 minutes of footage.

Even though Kodak’s new Cine-Kodak had reduced the cost of amateur film making considerably with the introduction of 16mm safety film, Ogden’s invention wanted to reduce the cost of film and processing even further, creating a much larger market for his products. He did this by utilizing a “boustrophedonic pattern” in his camera and projector movement.

The film would move to the right for two frames and then drop down and move to the left two frames before jumping to the next frame and doing it again. This exposed 4 images into the same amount of space as a single 16mm frame. Which meant a normal 100’ roll was the equivalent of 400’ now.

In order to watch your film, you needed to also purchase the Kemco Projector which utilized the same movement. It was the only projector capable of playing back the film properly. But the projector was capable of playing standard 16mm films as well with a flip of the switch at the top of the projector.

Kemco HoMovie Camera and Projector — Kemco Homovie Projector

Despite a large advertising campaigns, Kodel barely made more than a few hundred of their Kemco HoMovie systems, making it a very rare format. Just a year after Ogden brought the HoMovie to market, Kodak fearing a loss of market share introduced 8mm film and the HoMovie became a commercial flop, while Kodak went on to dominate a growing amateur market.

Read my earlier blog post about the Movette 17.5mm Camera released 12 years earlier with a similar fate.

NEVER has an invention created such a furor and so much astonishment among the trade as the new KEMCO HOMOVIE Camera and Projector. While the revolutionary principle employed is amazing in itself, it is the ultra precise and high quality mechanism employed, as well as many startling conveniences of operation and the superior results obtained that surprises even those who have made motion pictures their life study.

The Kemco Homovie in our collection was owned by H.B. Ridge and was used to create some of his early test films. The collection includes many of these original films shot by Clarance Ogden and H.B. Ridge along with a full set of all the accessories made for the camera.